To facilitate dialing telephone numbers, which usually include seven digits for local telephone numbers, ten or eleven digits for long distance telephone numbers, and even more digits for international telephone numbers, for example, repertory dialing systems have been developed, such as the type manufactured and/or sold by Western Electric under the trademark "Touch-A-Matic". Typical repertory dialers, such as the "Touch-A-Matic" brand store in memory several telephone numbers and selectively, upon pressing a respective repertory key, read out respective telephone numbers to effect an automatic telephone dialing function. The "Touch-A-Matic" repertory dialer also has a last number dialed feature to re-dial the last number that was manually dialed via the key pad on the dialer. The key pad is the typical array of ten or twelve keys found on a conventional push button type telephone, as opposed to the over-all keyboard of the repertory dialer which includes the key pad digit keys, the repertory keys, and/or other function generating keys, such as the last number dialed function generating key. In past repertory dialers there has been no need to store in the last number dialed memory numbers other than those having been manually dialed from the key pad, for any number stored in the repertory memory could be re-called simply by pushing a single repertory key.
There are a number of disadvantages to conventional repertory dialers. For example, the size of the repertory dialer housing, keyboard, and face plate covering the keyboard become exceedingly large as the repertory capacity, i.e. the number of telephone numbers that can be dialed by pushing single respective repertory keys, increases. As a corrollary, the number of telephone numbers that can be stored in conventional repertory dialers is limited to the physical size of the piece of equipment and is not expandable. Moreover, many, if not all, of the prior repertory dialers have substantially fixed circuitry and operation thereof, which minimizes their over-all utility.